It’s been nine years in the making, but the Ritz-Carlton’s second hotel in Australia is finally open, and executive chef Michael Greenlaw – a keen fisherman and free diver – is showing us some of the spots where he will be sourcing seafood for its restaurant, Atria.
You can get abalone, snapper and wakame seaweed straight from the south-west waters of Port Phillip Bay, he says. Princes Pier, east of the mouth of the Yarra River, is a good fishing spot for bream, while King George whiting is plentiful off the sandy beach of St Kilda. Further south-east at Brighton, there are “absolutely thousands” of abalone, mussels and oysters, and he catches garfish and free-dives for scallops around the Mornington Peninsula.